My Name Is Venus Black

by Heather Lloyd

  * * *

  —

  TINKER DECIDED TO let the boy go for Easter in the hopes he might look like a regular dad. But that doesn’t keep him from worrying during his entire shift at the Burger Bar.

  He feels like he’s taking unnecessary chances. But it also seems like the smart thing to do. Act regular. Let Leo have a friend. When he thinks about what could go wrong, he’s grateful in some ways that he kidnapped such a weirdo. A normal kid might still be asking for his mom.

  It’s not Leo who worries him. It’s that girl. She’s a smart one, you can tell. She has that same look Venus used to get whenever he went round there, like she knows what you’re thinking and she’s sure it’s bad.

  He arrives home at a little after eleven. The apartment looks the same, all tidy like he left it. The girl or her father had promised to bring Leo home by 8:00 P.M. He wishes he’d had a hidden camera hooked up to make sure that no snooping went on. Not that there’d be much to find.

  He checks on the boy. Sees the familiar lump and is relieved. He lingers for a moment and then approaches the bed. Leo’s holding something in his hand. A red fire truck. The Herreras must have given it to him. He feels a pang of jealousy. There’s nothing wrong with the blue car Leo already has.

  He watches the boy breathing evenly. He looks different when he’s sleeping, more like a normal kid. Tinker wonders if his brother kissed his boy good night. He bets he did, because that’s the only time you can ever touch the kid without him acting like you’re hurting him. Tinker never thought about stuff like that before. Like what Leo might be missing from not being at home.

  Maybe he should kiss the boy good night for his poor dead brother. For a second, he feels embarrassed at the idea. But finally he leans over to Leo’s head and his lips quickly brush the blond hair. He smells like Johnson’s Baby Shampoo, the only kind Tinker buys, ever since Kimberly told him it might help him not lose more hair.

  Then it’s over. The boy has no idea. Tinker gently pulls the blankets up a little higher over his bony shoulders. He shuts the door behind him. He knows that in the morning, at around eight, the boy will emerge looking soft and sweet. If Tinker is up early, he’ll say “Morning, Leo.” And Leo will ignore him.

  More likely, though, the boy will get up first. And since the pullout is right next to the card table, Tinker will wake to the sound of a spoon scraping in a bowl. It’s something he’s come to count on. Snap! Crackle! Pop!

  * * *

  —

  AFTER EASTER, TINKER is more nervous than ever that the Mexican girl is onto him. She keeps asking to visit Leo, and Tinker keeps putting her off. When Tinker goes to the shop to pay for May’s rent, Tony brings up the tattoo. “Hey, you still want that tat you mentioned?”

  Tinker is stuck. He doesn’t want the tat, but he can’t see how to squirm out of it. “You bet,” he says with fake enthusiasm.

  “What kind of design do you have in mind?” Tony asks. “Maybe Leo? I could do a cool lion image with his name.”

  “That sounds great,” Tinker answers. “I’m kind of busy lately, though, so maybe in a few weeks?”

  He wishes he could say years. When Tony suggests a day and time in late May, Tinker agrees. It will give him enough time to think of a way to get out of it.

  Instead, he finds himself in Tony’s shop on the designated day and time. He figures he might as well get it over with. He tells himself he’s only a little nervous, but the truth is that he is terrified. He knows that getting a tattoo is no big deal for most dudes. But Tinker hates pain. He hates needles. What if it’s so painful he runs crying from the room?

  A few days earlier, Tony had knocked on the door and showed him a drawing of a lion’s mane with the word Leo inside it. Tinker had acted as if he liked it, but what kind of idiot gets a tattoo of the name of the kid he kidnapped? At least it will be hidden on his chest. He can cover it up.

  And now the time has come. When Tony directs him to take off his T-shirt, Tinker hesitates. What had he been thinking? He’d wanted to make sure he could hide the tat. But he hadn’t thought about having to take off his shirt. The last thing he wants is for anyone to see his jelly belly or his man boobs.

  He tries to act like it’s no big deal, whipping his shirt off in a flash. But he feels totally naked and can’t help crossing his arms over his chest. Tony directs him to lean back on a padded contraption that reminds Tinker of something they’d have in a gym.

  He’s sitting there shirtless when the daughter comes in and takes a nearby stool. Tinker can’t believe it. He waits for Tony to throw her out. Instead, he asks, “Okay if Tessa watches?”

  Are you kidding? It’s the last thing he wants, but he can also tell Tony isn’t really asking. “Fine by me,” he says. “Promise you won’t tell if I cry?”

  But the girl doesn’t even laugh. “It happens,” she says, serious-like. And then she smirks at her dad.

  Tony is swabbing Tinker’s chest with something. Cleaning it, probably, which makes sense, he supposes. This is sort of like getting a shot, needles and all. Then Tony applies some kind of cream and Tinker spots a razor on a tray.

  “You gotta shave me?”

  “Oh yeah,” says Tony. “But just this one spot. It’ll grow back, don’t worry,” he says.

  Tony explains that the first part of getting the tattoo is the most painful. Then Tony asks about his music preference.

  “Got any Van Halen?”

  “Sure do. Tessa, you want to put that on?” Tinker sees that the girl doesn’t like his choice. Good. Maybe she’ll go away.

  “Runnin’ with the Devil” comes on, but it’s not nearly loud enough. When the girl asks about Leo, Tinker’s not surprised at all. But why is some girl who’s almost a teenager so interested in a kid like Leo?

  “Leo’s good,” says Tinker. “He likes the fire truck you gave him at Easter.”

  “Great,” she says. “It was so fun to have him.”

  Ha! Tinker resists the urge to snort.

  “Do you think I could go up and say hi to him while you’re getting the tattoo?”

  Tinker stalls. He can’t see a way to say no. “Sure, you can pop in for just a few minutes,” he says. “But Leo probably needs his nap soon.”

  “So does Leo have any friends around here?” she asks.

  “Not really,” he says. “He doesn’t like to play with other kids.”

  The girl falls silent then, but Tinker can tell her mind is loaded and aimed right at him.

  “Did Leo ever have siblings? At Easter he mentioned a sister named Venus.”

  Tinker panics at the mention of Venus. “Venus?” he asks. “Well, that’s a strange name. But, no, Leo’s mom and I never did have another baby. You can’t take what Leo says seriously. As you know, he’s not right in the head.”

  Tinker’s thoughts are racing. How’d she find that out? Little snoop! Now he’s more desperate than ever to get the girl off his back. Why doesn’t her dad make her shut up? Instead, he seems perfectly fine to have his daughter torment a customer while he gets ready to stick him with a needle gun.

  How did Tinker let this happen? What did he ever do?

  Finally, the girl hops down from the stool by Tinker’s head. “So I’ll go check in on Leo,” she says. Tinker pulls out his apartment key and hands it to Tessa.

  “I’ll see you later,” she says. “Good luck with the tattoo.”

  Soon, the pain comes. Tinker shuts his eyes—he can’t watch. There’s the needle. Maybe more than one needle. He suspects that Tony hates him, so he’s probably using the thickest needles he has.

  But Tinker doesn’t cry. Instead, he gets really angry with himself, because he’s almost certain now this nosy Tessa girl is onto him. Why was she asking about Venus? He thinks about how stupid he is. How stupid to take Leo. How stupid to get a tattoo. How stupid to think he
could turn his life around. How stupid to think all this could end up any other way than bad.

  By the time he stumbles up to his apartment to drink beer and pass out, he knows what he has to do. It’s time to get rid of Leo.

  Somehow, I thought that five and a half years would be enough time to make the damn reporters forget. But I was wrong. I’m standing on a corner at the Seattle Metro bus stop in downtown Issaquah when I spot several reporter types rushing down the sidewalk in my direction. They probably followed the Echo Glen van from the parking lot.

  I fight the urge to run—to the tire store across the street, or the grocery on the other corner. Maybe I could lose them out a back door. Or maybe not. I don’t want to risk missing the bus I’ve been waiting to board for years.

  So I stand my ground, gripping my suitcase in my left hand, hiding my face in the crook of my right arm, my big hair helping to shield me. The news people gather around me anyway, snapping pictures like birds pecking at the same worm. Shouldn’t there be a law against this?

  Just then, to my relief, I hear the bus approaching. One of the reporters offers me a ride. The others fire questions without waiting for answers:

  “What are your plans, Venus?”

  “Do you think your sentence was fair?”

  “Why isn’t your family here to pick you up?”

  “How does it feel to be nineteen and free?”

  “Do you know what happened to Leo?”

  This last one catches me off guard. I should have known they’d bring up Leo, but it’s been a couple of years since I’ve spoken his name aloud. Everyone at Echo Glen knew better than to bring up the subject of my missing brother.

  Finally the bus screeches to a stop in front of me and the doors gasp open. Without turning around, I scramble onto the bottom step. “Quick! Close the doors,” I tell the driver. He looks at me strangely.

  “Can’t you see? They’re fucking reporters!”

  The driver glances over my shoulder, shrugs, and pulls a lever. I hear the doors snap shut behind me.

  “Thank you!” I say, finally allowing myself to exhale. I step up to pay, and as I dig in my pocket for the fare, I venture a glance outside. The reporters are casually walking away. Clearly none of them ever planned to board.

  Embarrassed, I carry my case down the aisle toward the back, where perhaps there are some passengers who didn’t witness my stupid little scene. I stash the case, then slide into an empty row and do my best to slouch from view. Which isn’t as easy as it used to be. Despite the shitty food at Echo, I’ve grown three inches, to a gangly five foot nine.

  Inez always said I took after her mother’s side—most of them tall.

  After a while, I realize I’m suffocating. Duh—I have on several T-shirts and tops, plus a sweater. When you leave Echo Glen, they let you raid the charity bin. But since we each get only one suitcase, we pile on the layers. I’m also wearing shorts beneath my high-water jeans.

  I peel off the purse strapped across my chest, then the sweater and two other shirts. It still feels weird to carry a purse. After I bought it on a group excursion to Kmart, I had no idea what to put inside. Now it holds a self-help paperback, a “graduation” gift from my counselor, Sharon. There’s also a beautiful hand-tooled journal from Diane, the president of Echo Glen. And a few other items, like an Afro hair pick and a cheap wallet I bought to hold the fortune I had made on work release.

  Okay, it isn’t a fortune, but three hundred dollars looks pretty good in there. I picked a billion damn berries and shoveled a million tons of horseshit to get that rich.

  My original transition plan from Echo had me living and working at the YMCA in Seattle, helping out in their after-school program. My worst nightmare, in other words. I might as well have stayed at Echo Glen. All I want is a room of my own. Privacy. And a decent job until I can save enough to buy a car and move to California.

  Doug, the guy who ran the transition program, repeatedly emphasized how hard it can be for a felon to get a job straight out of lockup, even if you’re a juvenile.

  I know he’s right, especially since in Washington State, violent crimes like mine stay on your record forever and can never be sealed.

  Which means any prospective employers who do any checking will quickly discover the truth about me. Which is exactly why I’m done being me. What Doug doesn’t know is that I’m not planning to look for work as Venus Black, the thirteen-year-old girl who got a gun and blah, blah, blah. I’m dumping that girl to begin all over again as Annette Higgman. That’s the name on a Washington State driver’s license I filched from a girl I met picking berries.

  I would have preferred a softer name. A Sarah or a Holly, maybe. I’ve noticed that girls with easy, breezy names don’t end up at places like Echo Glen. My theory is that if you have a nice name, people are nicer to you, and so you become a nicer person than someone with a hard, mean name like Venus.

  At least Annette, with her dark curly hair and noticeable nose, looks like me. Kind of. I don’t know how to drive, so I won’t be using the license for that. And she’s only a year older than me, so I can’t use it to drink. But it might come in handy if I need it for a job or a hotel room.

  Which is my first assignment, I remind myself. My hands are growing more and more clammy with excitement and nerves as the Metro bus rumbles on and off the highway, making its way toward the city through a seemingly endless number of stops. Finally, we roll across a long bridge and into a tunnel. And after the tunnel, we are suddenly in downtown Seattle.

  I watch out the window for the Capitol Hill area of Seattle because a newbie at Echo named Carla told me it would be a good place to find restaurant work. She also suggested I list my last place of employment as the Crab Pot in Renton, since they recently went out of busines. I exit the bus and march up Madison Street, checking out any hotel that doesn’t look too much like a flophouse or too nice for a felon.

  By now I’ve put my hair in a big thick braid down my back. Seeing those reporters was a wake-up call. If I don’t want to be Venus Black, I better disguise myself a little. It would be smarter to just hack off my hair and dye it blond, but I can’t bring myself to even consider that. Apart from an occasional trim, I haven’t cut my hair since the night of my failed escape from Denney.

  Every time I think of going short, I remember the look on the fireman’s face when I asked him, sobbing, “Will you at least please cut it straight?” I think he really tried. And ever since, I’ve had this silly fantasy that someday I’d go find him and thank him for being kind—and if my hair was short, it would kind of ruin the moment. Or maybe it’s just a point of pride. Either way, the braid is my best option.

  After exhausting myself checking hotel prices, I settle for the only-partly disgusting St. James Hotel. At the registration desk, a guy smoking a pipe asks for my ID. Thank you, Annette Higgman. And just as I suspect he’ll do, he barely glances at it. Or maybe through the cloud of smoke he can’t read that I’m supposed to be three inches shorter with brown eyes.

  I have a theory about photographs. If you have a prominent nose, no one notices anything else.

  My room is on the third floor, and so naturally the elevator says it’s broken. It probably hasn’t worked in years. The carpet on the wide stairs is dirty and worn, and at my door, it takes a while to get the key to work. Clearly, the room was a steal because it is a dump. I gaze at the crummy floral bedspread, the cracked, filthy window, and the old-fashioned steam radiator like the ones we had on Rockefeller—and I feel ridiculously happy. Because it’s my room. All mine.

  For a second, I think I might burst into tears of joy, which scares the impulse right out of me. After not being able to cry for so long, I’m afraid that if I ever do, my tears will take me back to places and memories I never want to visit again. At this point, years of counseling have put way too many holes in that sheet I used to wear.


  I am bummed to notice there isn’t a TV. The phone on the side table is accompanied by a card warning of charges for local calls. Seriously? I shouldn’t care, since I have no one to call, but nevertheless I feel an overwhelming urge to phone a friend and shout: “I’m free! I’m out! It’s over!”

  I sprawl on the bed to think about my plan. I have the numbers of a couple of friends who got released from Echo Glen about a year ago. I really liked one of them, Carmen. But calling her up right now would make me feel like I was going backward. Like I’m still Venus Black.

  Of course, I know the number of the house on Rockefeller, but I can’t imagine Inez is still living there. Not that I would call her, anyway. I haven’t seen my mother since a few years ago, when I finally agreed to do some counseling with her. She tried to convince me how sorry she was for dismissing and ridiculing my suspicions about Ray. For a second there, I almost believed her. But then the next time I saw her she asked if she could sell the rights to our story to some woman named Anna Weir in California. “She’s a great writer and she promises to be fair. If Anna’s book did well, maybe there’d be a movie….”

  I haven’t spoken to her since. She and Anna Weir can go…well, you know.

  I didn’t exactly keep in touch with old friends, either. Jackie wrote me once during the first year. Her handwriting—curvy and round like cartoon words—looked the same as when we passed notes in junior high. She apologized that her mother wouldn’t let her talk to me or visit me at Denney or Echo Glen. She wrote about the latest gossip, like who made out with whom at a dance. What teachers she got for winter semester.

  I never wrote her back. But once in a while I would pull out her letter and read it again, marveling that I used to live in that world, that I was once a girl like her.

  Most of the time, I worked hard not to think about the life I almost had. Like whom I might have dated. How popular I might have been. On my sixteenth birthday, though, I couldn’t help wondering what it would have felt like to get a driver’s license, celebrate with friends at 31 Flavors, and finally get to cruise Colby Avenue.